Ask HN: How do you keep social life if WFH?
I moved to the Netherlands during COVID last year. I have a fully remote job and work from home 99% of the time. This combination has wrecked my social life, and I find myself sad and missing social connections and in a new place. I’m generally a social person that enjoys conversations with people, and service energy from being social. But, I feel like I’m stuck in a loop that I can’t even think properly to get myself out of it.
My initial step is to get to my office(1.5 hour train commute one-way) for two days of the week.
I would like to know how others in similar work patterns like myself handle it?
27 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 46.1 ms ] threadI have also recently moved to a different country, so in reality, I don't have many friends here to begin with.
Luckily for me, I've never really felt the need as I am pretty active online anyway and never have a moment where I'm not chatting with someone or have someone to chat with. IRL I meet with friends once a week, once every two weeks for some beers and other related activities. It's enough for me.
I think, if you can't get the social interaction you need from work then it might be worth looking into any sort of social clubs and whatnot that you could take on during the weekend. Photography, painting, whatever you fancy there are sure to be clubs in your city :)
Point is you are seeing them repeatedly so friendships develop.
Especially good are retreats/activity weekends because you will spend concentrated time with people.
Good luck
The trick is to seek out people whom you enjoy spending time with in social settings. This can be e.g. through a gym, arts&crafts classes, uni courses, volunteer activities, sport clubs, nature clubs, cooking classes board game card chess d&d groups ... whatever your fancy.
Even if you are more introvert you will find these environments very welcoming.
Having a social life without the everpresent undertones of office politics and policies can be very invigorating
I've just had a conversation with my wife about how it is impacting me, and that I need to carve out personal time as well, and not be relied on for assistance with the kid on _all_ days. Every other day, it is my turn and she can get the time to do something as well. Thinking and talking about it already gives me hope that I can make useful changes and feel differently.
Unless you're applying yourself to some great quest, work is a secondary task in life. You've got this backwards.
What do you want from life? Start at the top of that list and work downwards.
But the standard workday at eats majority of your daylight hours. How is that ever going to be secondary.
Unless you're creating something, work is the thing that sucks that you do to put food on the table.
So you decide - this is the life I want to lead - and this is the job or income source or life quest or whatever that fits into it. Like, it's a holistic thing, it's not a bolt on.
That doesn't mean you go climbing at 2pm on Tuesday, you and your friends are probably at work. That's a different problem.
Finding other people that I'd like to hang out with was way easier when I was single, had plenty of time in my hands, no covid restrictions, and have some colleagues as catalyst for such friend of a friend of a friend networks. Doing it in a new country, while working from home, with restricted times(growing with a 3 year old son), is the challenge that became too much.
You're really far away from it and you don't seem to be getting on with WFH. So can you change the job? Move closer to work? etc etc etc.
Life is holistic, you can't just change one thing, everything has to move to create balance.
Now I've switched jobs. I work at company that has hybrid work policy. This was one of the main reasons for the switch - to be among the people again.
I go to office at least once a week.
Do you have friends outside of the office? Favorite places to eat and talk? Meetups you can go to meet and hang and talk about things you like? A conference "hallway track" to meet like minded technical people? Hell, Bumble even has a bff feature if that works for you. When I moved to a new city, I met some of my current best friends through a date that didn't pan out. It was scary to meet a total stranger when I didn't have friends in the city, but people are generally nicer than you might think.
I hope this helps at least a bit.
Either way, whether you are in some tiny village or the big city, get out of your flat and down the street - to the pub, the gym, the church, etc. Whatever your thing and whoever your people are, they are out there somewhere and it's just a matter of figuring out where to find them. Yes you have to put yourself out there and that can be hard (I'm horribly shy and introverted myself) but that's the cost to connect. I'm wondering - even though Dutch people are wonderfully poly-linguistic, I'm gathering that you might be foreign and I'm wondering if you are concerned about your language skills? Is that feeling like a barrier for you? Best way to improve on that is get out and start interacting.
After two years of almost permanently working from home, it's grown to the place where the whole team just hangs when they're working to have someone to talk to when sitting alone at home, but also to ask serious questions, and equally so to talk non-work related banter from time to time.
Since the last few releases of Jitsi, we're also using breakout rooms to discuss some more in-depth things without annoying the rest of the team. Previously, those people would move to another meeting and come back when they're done. Now, they can stay in the one permanent meeting, and the rest can see them sitting in a breakout room, and go in and ask them when something urgent is going on.
I honestly think this approach has kept the whole team sane during 2+ years of full time working from home.
Almost any local bar (not a touristy place) can serve the need of "social interaction". The greatest thing is what you actually isn't needed to drink a lot or anything at all.
It's not a universal solution of course but being able to confirm what you are actually can interact with peoplr, even ones you never seen before (or after), greatly helps to scrath the social itch.
So if you moved to the Netherlands just for a good job, then perhaps consider moving back to wherever is “home” and continuing to work from there. It might take a little negotiation but it would be worth it for your health and happiness.